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Eric Prideaux

There was no question it was the right floor at Tokyo's Intercontinental Hotel. The voice booming through the walls could only belong to one man.
"I want life!" CNN anchor Richard Quest blared out in his signature English accent to a reporter whose question ...

In the wake of Thursday's Lower House passage of the education reform bill, critics wonder whether news management may have been used to clear the path for what one commentator alleged to be a "fascist" power grab by the central government.
The concerns arise following ...

When I was a teenager living in New York some 20 years ago, I bought a tiny introduction to Zen Buddhism from a bookstore in midtown Manhattan. A $1 clearance-sale copy, it was so small that I could slip it into my back pocket. ...

Chairman Mao Zedong -- who back in 1935 wrote that his nation's basic task was "to oppose the attempt of Japanese imperialism to annex China" -- obviously had some, shall we say, issues with the Middle Kingdom's diminutive neighbor to the east.
So the Chairman ...

Later this month, when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi concludes what may have been Japan's most flamboyant premiership ever, pundits aplenty are sure to lavish his five-year term with glowing praise.
They'll likely enthuse that, on Koizumi's watch, the mountain of bad debts at banks ...

This story is part of a package on "Disability in Japan". The introduction is here.
When child psychiatrist Seiji Sakai meets with his clients, he listens to their life stories with the intensity of a sage in meditation -- silently absorbing words like a leaf ...

There may be many perfectly good reasons to spend a weekend sloshing around in water panning for gold. Trying to get rich isn't one of them.
Such was the prime nugget of wisdom I came away with after spending one recent sunny morning in Minobu ...

war criminals," Kamijo said. "If the Emperor really said things like that, I don't want to worship him."
Kamijo, with a Hinomaru and the name of his rightwing group, Gishin Gokoku-kai, emblazoned on his crisp blue uniform, was not much impressed by Prime Minister Junichiro ...

Dear Japan Times,
What the heck are those lanterns strung up in the streets of my neighborhood at this time of year? Some line each side of the street from one power pole to the next, so I thought they were simply summer decorations. But ...

This story is part of a package on "Growing old healthily." The introduction is here
Most folks want to wind down once they've reached their golden years. Takao Arayama, however, wanted to go up in the world -- as far as the summit of Mount ...